Part of the lag was due to updating the DOM constantly to add to the "Launch Log." I made a minor performance optimization and that part of it is working a lot faster now.

Very true. 1957 is the starting point because the visualization only shows rockets that went to orbit (or that were intended to, at least); suborbital flights are not included.

I asked an astronomer friend of mine to look at the specs and got a small list of advantages:

-No atmosphere. Seeing would still be a considerable factor; getting 1 arcsecond resolution on Earth is not easy.

-No clouds

-Ability to focus on the same object for an extended exposure

-Infrared

-Can look north and south

There are a lot of advantages to this, even with their aperture size.

Actually, not infrared but UV. They seem to have filters in the vacuum-UV which can't be observed from the ground. The near-IR out to 1.1um that they are going out to is not really a problem from the ground.

Terrific suggestions. I'm a bit lukewarm on the branding (it looks nice, but I don't know enough about marketing to really give it a fair assessment), but their redesign of the site content presentation is really practical, easy on the eyes, and improves usability a lot. I'd love to see something like this in practice.